2021 Deer Grinding Party

 It's a little later in the season for us - we usually grind our deer in late Feb or early March.  Why'd we wait so long?  Schedules I guess.  Spring Break.  No real reason.  Glad we did though as we had a beautiful day and even got to open the garage doors to let in some fresh air.

Me, Alex, Eric and Davey drove down to Rob's with 250# of meat to grind.  We left at 6 am and arrived at 7:30.  Rob had breakfast of biscuits & gravy with hashbrowns ready for us.  After which, we retired to the garage to get to work.

We ground 80% deer with 20% pork (by weight) with seasonings.  Why the pork?  To get some fat into the mix.  Venison is so lean that you will burn it when cooking or it won't coagulate and thus, pork is needed.  Alex & Eric ground the mix with the coarse head in the grinder.  Then they added water to thin the mixture and ground it again with the fine head in the grinder.  The final product looked just like hamburger.

Then, me, Rob, and Davey stuffed that mixture into snack sticks, salami, hamburger, sausage, and brats.  We ground and stuffed for six straight hours.  Short stoppages were made to rehydrate.  When we were done, there was 14# (6.4 kg) of pork left.  Rob just happened to have pork sausage seasoning leftover, so we ground straight pork.

Rob took some of the freshly ground pork and threw it on his griddle.  This concoction became our lunch.  And man was it an awesome lunch!  We requested that Rob purchase some more of that seasoning mixture for use next year.

We cleaned up all the gear and stowed it away until next year.  We left southern Indiana a little after 4 pm with fine cuisine to consume for the rest of this year.  We made a few observations today:

• My initial guess was that this was the 8th year we have been grinding deer.  Upon further discussion, we agreed that this was at least year 12 and maybe 13.
• RePhil has only ever been on one trip - he always has an excuse for why he can't come
• In our 12-13 years of grinding, we estimated that well over a ton (900 kg) of meat has gone through the grinder.  And of note, each pound of meat is ground TWICE - once coarse and once fine - so probably 2 tons of meat have passed through that grinder

Ah yes, speaking of RePhil, he didn't add any meat to the pot and he was not even present to help.  But did that stop him from asking for the spoils from today?  Oh no.  He wanted some sausage.  Well, see below.  Davey took care of him!

Eric & Alex grinding venison.

Note how it looks just like hamburger?

This is the second, or fine, grind.

Davey getting ready to stuff some salami.

The stuffer is controlled by compressed air and operated by a foot pedal.

Rob grilling up some fresh pork burgers for lunch.

Those were some awful tasting sausage patties!

This is the photo I sent to RePhil.

Told him that this is what we did with his portion of the venison today.

Also sent this photo to RePhil.

This is Davey asking RePhil if this is enough "sausage" for him.

And yes, we did make those two small bags of sausage for RePhil.

See us all in t-shirts?  It was a very pleasant day for grinding deer.  Also, please note the lack of any evidence of alcohol in these pictures.  No beer was consumed during the making of this post.  Yeah right.  We had to stop and get more because we ran out!